Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

James Forsyth

How the coalition plans to recover

This morning’s battle of the political odd couples shows the dangerous direction in which the AV referendum is going for the coalition. The Yes campaign are becoming ever closer to making explicit the argument that a yes vote is the best way to keep the Tories out. For their part, the No side are continuing to hammer the compromises of coalition and the unfairness of the party in third place determining the result. In other words, no more Lib Dems in government. These campaign strategies mean that the result of the referendum will be seen as a decisive rejection of one side or other of the coalition. This is precisely

Just in case you missed them… | 18 April 2011

…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Fraser Nelson urges you to have a look at this week’s Spectator, and says that the Bank of England needs to listen to Andrew Sentence. James Forsyth wonders of the coalition will declare war on the enemies of enterprise, and explains Vince Cable’s objections to coalition immigration policy. David Blackburn analyses David Cameron’s Sunday interview, and says that the AV campaign has descended into cheap slogans and insults. Martin Bright asks if the far right operate as lone wolves. Nick Cohen doesn’t understand Tories. And Alex Massie examines Muckle Eck’s Big Mo.

Alex Massie

The Lib Dems Cut Their Own Throats

Meanwhile in Scotland, Tavish Scott, leader of the Liberal Democrats at Holyrood is enduring a tough election. Even if the latest polls are too pessimistic about his party’s chances the Lib Dems could still lose half their seats. It’s clear that Tavish blames Nick for this. If Clegg hadn’t done a deal with David Cameron the Scottish Lib Dems might not be in quite so much trouble. There’s something to this even though it’s also attributable to the different dynamics of a Holyrood election that has become, to a great extent, a choice between Alex Salmond and Iain Gray. The Lib Dems are being squeezed and have not been helped

Alex Massie

Vince Cable’s Marriage May Inform His Views on Immigration

Vince Cable’s disagreement with David Cameron over immigration seems entirely reasonable to me and much less problematic than his attitude to Rupert Murdoch’s attempt to purchase SKY. Sure, if he were a Tory he’d have been sacked. But he’s not a Tory and on a subject such as immigration – and the way in which the issue should be discussed – I can’t see why we have to maintain the fiction that everyone in the government must agree with one another on everything. Better, surely, to acknowledge that there’s a government-sponsored policy but even within the government, it being a coalition and all, not everyone considers the policy ideal. Or

James Forsyth

Why Vince Cable can’t keep his peace on immigration

The row sparked by Vince Cable’s attack on David Cameron’s speech on immigration is still rumbling on. The Sunday Times reports that Cable’s opposition to the coalition’s immigration policies has even extended to advising a college to take out an injunction against the government’s policies limiting non-EU student numbers. Cable’s actions are undoubtedly straining the coalition; Nick Clegg was visibly uncomfortable on the politics show as he attempted to square Cable’s actions with Cabinet collective responsibility. So, why is Cable doing this? I don’t think the reasons are particularly Machiavellian. Months ago, one Lib Dem Cabinet minister said to me that ‘Vince comes from the place and generation where any criticism of

Nick Cohen

On not understanding Tories (2)

Being the second in an occasional series. Part one is available here. Let me see if I can get this straight. The British Conservative Party has not won a general election since 1992, in part because the voters did not trust it to run the NHS. Ever since David Cameron became leader, the Tories have made a mighty effort to stop health destroying their electoral hopes. Through no fault of his own, David Cameron could not rebut the suspicion that toffs with private insurance would leave the common man and woman to suffer and die in under-funded NHS wards, by pointing to his family’s unhappy history. Because of the sickness

Fraser Nelson

The heir and the spare

Nick Clegg has announced a review into male primogeniture, but subscribers to The Spectator will – as so often – be already well-briefed on the subject. We ran a piece on this in Thursday’s magazine by Rachel Ward, the firstborn of the younger brother of an earl. This in itself will be enough to earn her a ribbing from some commentators on this blog, I imagine, but her thoughts on the subject are fascinating. Here’s a sample: “At the reading of the will after my father’s recent death, I was firmly reminded of my place by certain clauses bestowing his ‘residuary estate’ ‘upon trust for my first son “A” during his

Alex Massie

Muckle Eck’s Big Mo

Scotland on Sunday publishes a thumper of a poll today that suggests the SNP is on course to defeat Labour and remain the largest party at Holyrood. In fact, John Curtice’s calculations have the Nats taking 55 seats to Labour’s 49. The Tories, meanwhile, slip to 14 while the Lib Dems suffer a catastrophe and would be left with just six MSPs, just ahead of the Greens with five seats. Should this poll be accurate and should the election – which is still 18 fun-stuffed days away – produce a result of this sort then happy days indeed. By which I mean, of course, not-as-desperate-as-they-might-have-been-days. Kenny Farquharson lays it on

Clegg breaks the mould

For weeks now, the genteel coalition has been getting grubbier. Today the Deputy Prime Minister cut loose and went into campaign mode as the leader of the Liberal Democrats. With both eyes on preserving his party’s loosening roots in local government, he assaulted (£) Conservative and Labour councils for cutting services. Clegg was not assisted by the more prominent Lib Dems in local government: the ubiquitous councillor Richard Kemp, the Lib Dems’ chief at the Local Government Association, asserted, almost with a note of relish, that the party is going to get a ‘kicking’. It probably will. But, as James argues, Clegg’s immediate concern after 5 May will be to

Should the West negotiate with Gaddafi?

This week, former Foreign Secretary David Miliband gave a speech in the United States about Afghanistan, proposing the hand over of responsibility for building a political solution to the UN, headed by a Muslim mediator capable of negotiating with the Taliban as well as partners throughout the region. Last week, also saw former US negotiator Daniel Serwer make an interesting parallel to his time negotiating peace in Bosnia: ‘In my experience, there is nothing like staring a military commander in the face, asking him what his war objective is, and discussing alternative means to achieve it.  I asked the commander of the Bosnian Army that question in 1995, having been

Cheap slogans and funding scandals

This week, Bagehot has devoted his column in the Economist to a popular theme: the ‘shockingly low quality of the national campaigns’ in the AV referendum, typified perhaps by the Yes campaign’s latest funding scandal and the No poster pictured above. Bagehot writes: ‘I came away from a whistle-stop tour of the country pretty impressed by the diligence of local activists, as they try to explain the intricacies of the alternative vote (AV) to members of the public. The national Yes and No campaigns are a different matter, I argue: they have blown a chance to have a proper debate about the nature of British democracy. Judging by my anecdotal crop

Fraser Nelson

Andrew Sentance: interest rates must rise

Inflation – the cost of living – is the number one issue in Britain today. It is under-discussed in the House of Commons as MPs have no say in it: the task of controlling inflation lies with Mervyn King and his nine-strong Monetary Policy Committee, and its members are rarely interviewed. Little wonder, as a lot of them should be feeling fairly sheepish. But not Andrew Sentance. He’s been arguing for a rate rise for months, and doesn’t have long left to serve on the MPC, so he can speak quite freely. Inflation has been above target almost all the time he’s been on the MPC, he says, so in

A right mess

Observing French politics in the run-up to next spring’s presidential elections is like watching one of those slow-motion films of controlled car crashes in which a dummy and its vehicle are rammed into a wall. Nicolas Sarkozy is the dummy, who will make one last ungainly gesticulation as he lurches into catastrophe, and the coalition of liberals, centrists, free-marketeers, pro-Americans and careerists that carried him to power in 2007 is splintering as the laws of political aerodynamics wrench it apart. Two words explain this outcome: Le Pen. In 2002, the now governing party, the UMP, was created between the two rounds of the presidential election to support Jacques Chirac against

Where there’s a will …

Why haven’t ladies challenged male primogeniture? When the Labour MP Keith Vaz introduced a private member’s bill in January ‘to remove any distinction between the sexes in determining the succession to the Crown’, he mentioned that, although not one of those in line for the throne, he did need to declare an interest. Vaz is a fervent monarchist who believes that in order to save itself, the monarchy must change; that it must fall in line with modern Britain’s values on gender or die. You wonder why, in the face of a thousand and one more pressing social issues, anyone would want to bugger with the Act of Settlement, which

James Delingpole

Blogging’s not a job – it’s an expensive addiction

It’s about two years since my old friend Damian Thompson approached me with a couple of yellowish rocks and a pipe and said: ‘Have a puff on this. It’s about two years since my old friend Damian Thompson approached me with a couple of yellowish rocks and a pipe and said: ‘Have a puff on this. I think it might really suit you.’ No, of course not. What Damian actually introduced me to was something far more addictive, expensive, energy-sapping and injurious to health than crack cocaine. He asked me to join his elite team of bloggers at the Daily Telegraph. And now I’m having to go cold turkey and

James Forsyth

The government should recall parliament

Today’s declaration (£) by Barack Obama, David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy that Nato’s operation in Libya will continue until Gaddafi leaves power marks a shift in their rhetoric and makes explicit that regime change is the war aim. This has led to calls to recall parliament, most notably from David Davis on the World at One, to debate this change. Parliament merely voted to enforce the UN resolution which was not a mandate for regime change. The government would be well advised to heed these requests. It would be the best way of maintaining the necessary political support for the mission. Now that regime change is the explicit war aim,

Charting Labour’s future

The Labour Party is still ambling in the wilderness – sure of its destination, but uncertain of the route. Its response to last year’s general election defeat has been silence, publicly at least. In the privacy of debating chambers however, the party is charting its potential renewal. These circles murmur that ‘the state has reached its limits’; or, in other words, that Fabianism, the dominant force in the post-war Labour movement, has been tested to destruction. Philip Collins touches on this in his must-read column for the Times today (£): ‘Since the general election defeat, the only intellectual life in the party has come from blue Labour, an intriguing set

James Forsyth

The coalition can’t go on together with suspicious minds

Vince Cable’s attack on the PM’s speech today is just the latest elbow to be thrown in what has been a fractious few weeks for the coalition. The immediate cause of these rows has been the need for the Lib Dems to assert their distinctiveness before the May elections and tensions over the AV referendum. The Lib Dems, who feel that their leader is being ‘swiftboated’ by the Tory-funded No campaign, have been increasingly assertive in the last month or so. But there are dangers to this strategy. For one thing, it has eroded trust within the coalition. Ministers are now not being frank with each other because they don’t